Australia is home to just 26 million people, but OKX is betting the country could become one of the most important digital financial markets in the developed world if authorities act quickly enough.
A new exchange-backed report estimates Australia could unlock A$24 billion ($17 billion) in annual economic gains from marketplaces, payments and tokenized assets, provided lawmakers modernize licensing and market infrastructure rules.
The Digital Finance Cooperative Research Center study argues that innovation in digital finance could generate gains equivalent to about 1% of GDP, driven largely by more efficient currency exchanges, capital markets and cross-border payments.
However, on its current regulatory trajectory, Australia is expected to capture just A$1 billion of that potential by 2030, missing out on the vast majority of the so-called digital finance dividend. The gap between A$24 billion and A$1 billion forms the core of the industry’s pitch to the government.
“It’s particularly important in Australia, where productivity is the number one issue the government is trying to track,” Kate Cooper, CEO of OKX Australia, told CoinDesk in an interview, noting that national productivity growth has been largely stable over the last decade.
Cooper said the idea for the report came from policymakers repeatedly seeking data quantifying the impact of cryptocurrencies on Australia’s economy.
OKX’s focus on Australia may seem counterintuitive at a time when many exchanges are prioritizing the US (rival exchange Gemini recently left the country, as well as the UK and European Union), but Cooper maintains that the country offers a different kind of advantage.
“We have a broad strategy that focuses on what we call strategic markets, which are markets where there is a competitive advantage by entering the domestic market,” Cooper said.
The strategy depends on regulation like a moat. In markets like Australia, where licensing standards are strict and compliance costs are high, operating onshore can create a defensible position that offshore-only platforms cannot easily replicate.
For OKX, that means investing in local approvals and infrastructure to position itself for institutional flows, particularly as tokenized bonds, stablecoins and digital market infrastructure scale.
In a country with one of the largest pension equity funds in the world, Cooper explained, being locally regulated and integrated has less to do with retail trading volume and more to do with long-term access to concentrated capital.
If lawmakers enact appropriate legislation, that capital could help propel Australia into the acceleration phase of digital finance adoption.
Otherwise, Australia risks remaining in what Cooper describes as the “proof of concepts death spiral”, capturing only a fraction of the modeled A$24 billion opportunity as the industry – and its capital – flows offshore.
